Philadelphia – Following a four-month campaign, OSHA assessed more than half a million dollars in fines and hundreds of citations to construction companies in the agency’s Philadelphia region.

OSHA said it conducted 545 no-notice inspections during the “Construction Incident Prevention Initiative” in OSHA Region 3, which includes Delaware; Washington, D.C.; Pennsylvania; and West Virginia. (Virginia is a State Plan state and did not participate in the initiative.) Violations were found in 50 percent of the inspections, which focused on falls, trenches and silica exposure, according to a Nov. 26 OSHA press release.

In total, OSHA issued 243 citations and $658,862 in proposed fines during the initiative. Some of the more common violations were related to failures regarding fall protection on roofs, the safe construction of scaffolds and trench collapse protection.